


White-Hot Thing

by mombasas



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Extremis Pepper Potts, F/M, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Phil Coulson & Pepper Potts Friendship, Pre-HYDRA Reveal, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 04:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13733037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mombasas/pseuds/mombasas
Summary: Pepper Potts misses a Board meeting, finds an old friend, commits her first and second felonies, gets a haircut, has some fun on her Target run, and pulls an all-nighter, in exactly that order. The Pepper-and-Phil-Accidentally-Steal-an-Amnesiac road trip fic that absolutely nobody asked for.





	White-Hot Thing

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unabashed love letter to Pepper Potts, who definitely doesn’t need superpowers to save the world, but who gets them anyway. Set post-Avengers and IM3, before CA:TWS & Ultron; not AOS-compliant. Extremis works as it does in the MCU, not Earth-616.

Pepper wakes up on Tuesday morning to find Tony asleep in the bed next to her. She blinks at his face, only a foot away from her own. It's almost too close for her eyes to focus on. The sunlight coming through the penthouse windows is weak but growing stronger. It paints Tony’s lax features in gold, catching on the bruise-dark circles under his eyes.   

“JARVIS,” she asks quietly, “what time did Tony come up?”

“3:17 in the morning, Ms. Potts.” JARVIS’s voice is low, a concession to the early hour.

“Huh,” says Pepper. “That’s actually pretty good.” She looks at him, still half-asleep herself, taking the moment to catalogue his rarely-still body. He’s motionless except for the slow rise and fall of his breathing, his arms tucked close against his chest, hands curled under his chin. She feels a smile curve her lips and runs a hand gently through his hair, careful not to wake him. Tony pushes into it like a cat, murmuring unintelligibly, and Pepper feels her small smile broaden into a grin. Then she slips out of the bed, pulls a bathrobe on over her pajamas, and goes to find coffee.

When she gets back, Tony’s still asleep, though he’s rolled over to curl around the warm, empty space where her body was. She says his name gently, setting the mugs down on the bedside table and rubbing a hand over his shoulder. He stirs, frowning in confusion for a moment before blinking himself into wakefulness.

“Hey.”

“Happy birthday.”

“S’that today?” he asks, frowning sleepily again.

Pepper rolls her eyes. “Sure is,” she says, hearing the note of fond exasperation in her voice. Tony has forgotten his own birthday almost every year she’s known him, with the notable exception of the time he was dying from palladium poisoning, which is a birthday they still don’t talk about because the one time they tried, Pepper started ugly-crying and punched him in the arm hard enough to leave a bruise. Tony forgets his birthday every year, and it’s one of the reasons she never begrudges him for forgetting hers. And literally everyone else’s. He doesn’t remember her parents’ names, but neither does he know his own social security number. It’s impossible to take anything personally.

“Huh.” Tony is clearly mulling this news over. “Well, come on, Potts,” he says eventually, planting his hands under him in order to sit up against the plush headboard. “What’d you get me?”

Pepper passes him a coffee mug. “Wow,” Tony says. “The romance is dead.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I can take it back,” she offers, and then snorts as Tony pulls the mug close to his chest protectively.

“No, I love it. Gift from the heart.” He leans into her side as she climbs back into the bed, tossing her robe onto the armchair and wedging her feet under his shins. Tony hisses but doesn’t draw away, and for that she graciously doesn’t dig her toes in.

“Your second gift,” she announces, digging out a slip of paper from the drawer beside her and presenting it to him with a flourish. She had Sun down in Legal draw it up for her and it looks very official, which is the opposite of how the two of them had appeared that afternoon, heads together over the laser printer and snickering. She watches as his eyes track over the form, sees the moment when it clicks and his gaze shoots back up to her face.

“Pep. Pepper. Pepper pot. Is this what I think it is?”

“Excused absence,” she confirms. “From three meetings, your choice. Today’s Board meeting is a birthday freebie.”

“I love you,” he says, brown eyes wide. “This is the best gift anyone has ever gotten me, you’ve outdone yourself. Not kidding, I’m actually speechless—”

Pepper shuts him up with a kiss, messy because Tony’s still talking at first and she’s laughing into it. He tastes like sleep and coffee, and she pulls back enough to take the mug from him and slide it onto the bedside table before moving to straddle his hips. His hands move automatically to her sides, slipping under the stretched-out SI t-shirt she’s wearing. His thumbs trace over her hips. Pepper shivers.

“Do you want your third present now or later?” She grinds down a little. There’s a curl of heat low in her belly and she does it again. “Full disclosure, it’s at least 50% for me.”

“Oh, well, in that case,” says Tony, looking up at her. “Both. Both is good.”

 

Five hours later, Pepper is squinting against the sun as she leaves Lockheed Martin’s New York office. She and Marillyn Hewson have a standing monthly meeting that is fifty percent jockeying for government contracts and fifty percent icy staring contest. Pepper’s pretty sure she won this round, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory—she has such a headache that she’s not sure it was worth it. Car, she decides. Car, ibuprofen, and a quiet lunch in Stark Industries’ most out-of-the-way courtyard, where she can slip her heels off and not end up in the tabloids for it. The weather is good, warm with the promise of summer’s approach, and she considers calling the Tower and seeing if Bruce wants to move Tony’s birthday dinner out to the roof.

A SHIELD agent is waiting by the Lincoln. Short hair, clean-shaven, anonymous-looking suit; he looks like every other agent she’s ever interacted with, but Pepper recognizes him, vaguely. Maybe from one of the Avengers’ press conferences? Patterson. No, Peterson.

“Ms. Potts,” he says, flashing his badge. “Agent Peterson, from SHIELD. Are you free?”

“Rarely. Is something wrong? Where’s Ben?”

“Your driver said he was going to take an early lunch,” says Peterson, smiling while he holds the door open for her. “If you have half an hour, there’s something we’d like you to look over.” 

“Oh, uh. I do actually have some time,” she says, frowning slightly as she checks her StarkPad. It’s unusual, though not unprecedented, for SHIELD to request a meeting with her personally. Stark Industries has a number of independent contracts with the organization, but Tony generally handles them, and Pepper is happy to let him. She has more than enough on her plate with their other international, domestic, and military contracts, not to mention the day-to-day tasks central to running a Fortune 500 company with thousands of employees.

“It shouldn’t take long at all,” Peterson assures her. Heaving a mental sigh, Pepper gives up her dream of taking a luxurious, solitary lunch and gets into the car. Peterson closes the door, moving to the driver’s side and sliding in himself. He starts the car quickly, pulling into the congested city traffic before Pepper has even finished fastening her seat belt. She glances up in confusion and notices two things.

One, the clear privacy partition has been raised.

And two, one of Peterson’s knuckles is scraped, a smear of fresh red blood catching where the skin has torn.

Pepper stills. When she raises her gaze, Peterson’s eyes are already fixed on hers in the rear view mirror.

The ground drops out from beneath her. For an instant the swooping feeling is entirely adrenal, some primordial part of her body moving faster than her mind could ever hope to. Then her head spins, so abruptly that nausea rises in her throat. The back of the town car is filling, impossibly quickly, with a thick white smoke. In the span of a heartbeat, even the solid leather seats in front of her are nearly obscured. She holds her breath on instinct, but it doesn’t seem to matter; her muscles are no longer responding to her brain. Pepper feels herself slumping sideways, caught by the seat belt as her body floats further and further away from her mind. The last thing she sees is her own hand, straining hopelessly for the door handle even as her vision goes dark.

 

*

 

When Pepper first started working for Tony Stark, she’d expected to hate him. It wasn’t an unreasonable expectation, and might have lasted longer except for the circumstances of their first meeting. Howard had just died and the Los Angeles branch of SI was awash in gossip, rumor, and not a little panic. Pepper, just coming up on her one-year anniversary with the company, hadn’t paid much attention. Open enrollment was looming, and while her job in Human Resources wasn’t exactly the fulfilling travel-based career she’d dreamed of in college, she was going to figure out why some of the benefit data from the last year looked so weird or _die in the goddamn attempt_. It was something that should have been passed up to an independent financial auditor, but when she’d voiced her suspicions to her supervisor she’d been shut down immediately and instructed to focus on writing bullet-point memos about the new options for family dental coverage.

Instead, she’d found the spreadsheets invading her dreams and monopolizing her thoughts in the shower. She had obsessively turned them over in her mind for weeks, waking and sleeping and even in between, when she was supposed to be releasing all her negative thoughts with her breath during her Sunday morning yoga class in Silverlake. “Namaste,” the instructor said once they’d all groaned and pushed themselves out of corpse pose.

“Namaste,” Pepper had echoed distractedly, but what she really meant was, _Why the_ fuck _._

It had finally clicked the next morning as she brushed her teeth.

“Oh,” she’d said, staring wide-eyed at herself in the mirror, and then cursed when toothpaste foam dribbled onto her clean dress shirt.

Two hours, a coffee, and a new shirt later, she was standing over her supervisor’s secretary’s desk, clutching an armful of files.

“I need to speak to Mr. Kenworth.”

“He’s in a meeting,” Monica said quickly. As that was the same excuse Kenworth had been using to give her the runaround for the last two weeks, Pepper gave it exactly as much respect as it deserved, flashing an insincere smile at Monica and simultaneously pushing past her desk. Her hands were shaking a little, but—but—she was _right_ , she had been right the whole time, and if the quick calculations she’d done on her way here were even close to accurate, this was a bigger problem than even she’d suspected, and Kenworth had been brushing her off for _weeks_. She let the frustration fill her, ignoring Monica’s cry behind her and pushing the door open maybe, yes, okay, maybe a little aggressively, but she was _done_ with being ignored.

For once Monica hadn’t been lying. Kenworth actually was in a meeting, appearing a little cowed by the man sitting across from him and a lot alarmed once he realized who had barged into his office. The visitor looked vaguely familiar, but Pepper had gained some real momentum by the time she made it down the hallway, partially because of the heels, and she didn’t spare him more than a tight smile and an “excuse me” before she dropped the files onto Kenworth’s desk and planted her hands on her hips.

“I was right,” she said. “There’s something wrong with the numbers from last quarter. The expenditures—”

“Miss Potts—”

“—they don't even match last year’s data, I’ve looked, and I—”

“Miss Potts—”

“—swear I will take this to Tony Stark _himself_ if you do not—”

“Miss Potts!” Kenworth said loudly, darting a nervous glance at the other man, who had straightened in his chair and was looking between them sharply. “This is absolutely unprofessional, Miss Potts. You will wait outside, or I will be forced to call security.” Pepper had opened her mouth to argue but at that instant, something clicked in her brain and she realized why Kenworth’s visitor looked familiar. _Magazine cover_ , she thought, paling. _Company website. Oh, shit_. Tony Stark was still watching them. He was frowning now, eyes flitting from Kenworth’s face to hers.

“I’m—I’m sorry, sir,” Pepper said faintly. “I’ll—go, I’m sorry.”

“Wait,” Stark said. His gaze had met hers, sharp and direct, and he stood to flip open the folder she’d left on Kenworth’s desk. He’d skimmed it quickly, and then glanced back up—at her, not at Kenworth. “Explain.”

And Pepper, voice still a little shaky, had.

Then she’d been dismissed, finished out the work day on autopilot, gone home, poured and imbibed a very large glass of Riesling, gone to bed, and been been woken up sometime after 11:00 that night by the insistent ringing of her cell phone and Tony Stark's unfamiliar voice telling her that the discrepancy was bigger than even she had realized, and that he would double her salary for the rest of the year if she made it back to the office in thirty minutes. 

She’d dragged herself out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans and a wool sweater in deference to the November chill, and made it to Stark Industries in twenty-four.

Tony had been there alone, silk tie discarded on the back of a chair and the top two buttons of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He hadn’t tossed the files away, or handed them off to any of her superiors. The two of them spent the night there, in an empty conference room on the twenty-fifth floor, fluorescent light spilling out into the dark hallway and the occasional clatter of a custodian’s keys in the distance. It was the first of many, many nights spent that way—sometimes with the addition of Obie, or take-out, or once, memorably, a group of senior analysts from the JPL in Pasadena, but mostly just Pepper and Tony, half out of their work clothes, overcaffeinated and sprawled amidst papers and screens, batting ideas back and forth into the small hours of the morning.

Pepper doesn’t know what he saw when he looked at her in Kenworth’s office that morning. She knows what she saw, all that night and every day after: the hard edge of kindness hidden under his relentless intelligence like a razor blade, a kind of desperation beneath the bravado. Tony is the most infuriating, challenging, _aggravating_ man she’s ever met. He asks impossible things of her every single day. But that’s the horrible, amazing crux of it: he’s never, not _once_ , doubted her ability to accomplish them. The weight of that much trust should be crushing. But Tony, for all his faults, can read people better than anyone should be able to. Maybe a result of a childhood spent in front of the press, or an adolescence spent performatively grandstanding at parties. Whatever the reason, Tony had looked at her and known, instantly, something that Pepper herself had taken years to realize: she cannot handle being useless.

And, perhaps even more importantly, she _likes_ the challenge. Likes proving people wrong. There’s something proud and a little mean buried just below her skin that positively _gleams_ whenever she grinds someone’s too-low expectations into the dirt. Pepper has a wicked, well-concealed competitive streak about ten miles too wide and Tony recognizes what few others have: sometimes, Pepper just needs people to get out of her way.

 

He’d looked at her with the same direct gaze a month after the Malibu house exploded, a month after he’d had disappeared (and then reappeared) and Pepper had fallen hundreds of feet into an oil fire (and then climbed out again). Brown eyes, a slight wrinkle between his brows, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

“You’ve got two choices, Pep,” Tony had said. “I can remove the Extremis, all of it.” He had hesitated, looking at her intently, before continuing. “Or I can stabilize it. And leave it in.”

 

*

 

Pepper claws her way back to the surface a thousand times and gets dragged back under just as many. Once, she manages to open her eyes. Shapes move around her, blurred and streaky like silhouettes through a rainy window. Her head is heavy, won’t move right on her shoulders, but she lashes out clumsily with one arm and hears a loud crashing noise: the sound of a body hitting a wall. There are hands on her shoulders, a weight on her legs, and even as she bucks upwards, there’s a frigid, biting pain in her elbow and her awareness is yanked from her once more.

Time passes. She’s not unconscious, not quite, which makes it worse; it feels like she’s floating just at the edge of herself, slow and muddled. She ebbs and flows. Sometimes she’s closer to herself. Then she’s washed back under.

Pepper runs hot. Hotter than most, these days. Whatever they’re pumping into her is ice cold, numbing her until she’s almost shocky with it. Her limbs are more like sandbags than responsive parts of her body. She’s shivering, can feel the tremors shaking through her body, can feel her body where it jerks against itself. Her head is swimming. Someone’s speaking, tone taut with annoyance, but she can’t understand the words. The voice slurs into the sensation of something hard and cold sliding under her trembling fingertips, which moves until it tastes metallic at the back of her tongue.

More time passes. Not so much of it, maybe.

Pepper becomes aware of herself again. It’s slow but inexorable, a drag against her senses that leaves them aching and sore. She can feel her breath, drawing on and on through her chest. Her shoulder blades are pressing against something hard. She hurts but it’s distant, more like the memory of pain, or the expectation of it. Her eyelids are heavy so she doesn’t bother opening them at first, pouring all of her shaky intention into dragging her right arm across her body until her fingers brush limply against the inside of her left elbow. They catch against something rough, then something sharp and thin that sends a wave of discomfort down her arm when she jostles it. She fumbles until she can close weak fingers around it.

Then she pulls it out, millimeter by millimeter, and waits. 


End file.
